At just 2.54 miles long and
with 58 cars on track, traffic has been the key to everybody’s lap times. And
with five classes of car with varying speeds, managing traffic has been
imperative in maximising a consistent lap time.

But for qualifying, LMP1 and
LMP2 cars got a 15-minute session to themselves. However, 18 cars still
circulated which didn’t completely eliminate the traffic factor.

Johansson set an early best
time of 1:15.367 on lap five and held third position but despite going quicker
again a lap later, he was bumped down to fifth. A further improvement on his
times on lap ten would be his best but unfortunately, not by enough to move up
the order.

It can be said though that
qualifying is a ‘formality’ in endurance racing and with incidents aplenty in
the days leading up to today, the upcoming 1000-mile / ten-hour event could all
come down to attrition.

The road to Petit Le Mans
actually began last Sunday (September 25th) with the first of five
‘test’ sessions at the Road Atlanta race track before official practice began
yesterday (September 29th).

Whilst Brown and Johansson
had already sampled the car earlier in the year, Sunday gave Patterson his first Le
Mans Prototype experience.

His quick adaption to the
aerodynamic, Formula One-comparable car was evident with Patterson being the
fastest driver for United Autosports in three of the four practice sessions. Team
Chairman and Co-owner Zak Brown was the quickest in practice session 2.

Stefan Johansson sat out
most of the practice sessions having already had good seat time in the car in
testing including being the sole runner on Wednesday. He did, however, run in
the two-hour night practice session last night and this morning’s one-hour
session, but got cut short by the morning’s third accident to bring out the red
flags.

Working in partnership with
French race outfit DAMS motorsport, the team provided a faultless car enabling
the drivers to get maximum time in the car leading up to tomorrow’s race. Only
contact for Brown with a GT car ten minutes before the end of practice 2 forced
an earlier-than-planned return to pit road with a damaged rear splitter.

“We got back
into the swing of things pretty quickly at the start of the week and I think we
have a pretty good race pace. There’s over fifty cars on the track so it’s not
about ultimate pace that wins this race – it’s about not hitting someone, or
getting hit.

“You ultimately
want to go as fast as possible, but we haven’t been spending any time worrying
about qualifying. We just want to make sure we have a good race car that all
three drivers are comfortable with and I think we’ve got that.”

“It was a
little daunting at first, to get your head up and think ‘wow I can actually
drive this thing at speed’ but it took about two laps before totally falling in
love with this machine.

“Our times have
all been quite close but the one constant thing between day and night [driving]
is with 58 cars on a 4km track, it’s absolutely chaotic. You can’t look at lap
times as to who’s quickest because it’s a matter of fortune. If you encounter
traffic on the back straight, it’s a lot different to being behind 6 cars in
the ‘Esses’ where you literally have to glide through there and lose five or
six seconds verses half a second. Patience is going to win this race; not
speed.”